ITT people do all sorts of gymnastics instead of saying “I know but I just don’t care enough”
Because the reality is that there’s more than two people in the world. Most people are neither vegans nor assholes who don’t care enough. There’s those of us who think vegans are wrong. It’s funny how many environmental scientists are not in support of a world exodus towards veganism and yet my choice are “stop eating meat or admit you just don’t care”
How about “having spent my life around cattle farms, I know more than the person talking to me on this topic so they can go fly a kite”? Or “I have cattle specialists with advanced degrees in my family and after long discussion with them, I see all the gaps that these half-ass arguments online are missing”
…no, you’re right. We just don’t care enough. Oh look, I just found a study that shows that eating vegetables might be bad for the climate. Stop eating vegetables too, or you “just don’t care enough”
Ok I’ll humour you: what are vegans wrong about?
Land usage?
water usage?
Fertiliser usage?
That animal farms are hubs of disease outbreaks?
Thermodynamics?
Where the Amazon is going?
That killing/branding/doing surgery/forced impregnation etc when you don’t have to is wrong?
My one rule on this topic is never getting into a gishgallop. Vegan advocates love to play the roulette of swapping topics every time they lose ground on one, until they manage to win the argument having lost every piece of it by just tiring the other side out. You pick one of those topics, and I will field that topic only with you. It might surprise you, I will agree with you on some of them (like saving the Amazon).
But if you make me choose, I will choose land use because it’s a slam-dunk. 2/3 of agriculture uses marginal land that cannot (and I believe should not) be made arable. If resources were spent changing that instead of vegans fighting with farmers, that number could approach 100%. There’s important asterisks about that (both crops and livestock become more environmentally friendly if done close to each other due to their symbiotic relationship) that need to be kept up. But reducing livestock population directly WRT marginal land is wasteful.
If you want to discuss this you’re going to have to get more specific. What agriculture, where in the world, are feedlots used etc You’re obviously excluding aquaculture, and non grazing animals like pigs, I suspect you’re also excluding egg production since that is almost monolithically cage farming.
Like you can’t really say “oh these pigs are on non arable land” if that merely refers to their physical location and not where their food is grown.
So could you please drill down a bit? what specifically are you referencing?
